Wellington & Ferry Ride

We spent our last day on the North Island in Wellington, the capital of New Zealand. However, the day started off a bit less enjoyable with the eternal search for a parking space. Since we initially couldn't find an unpaid parking space, we decided to drive to the ferry terminal first and buy tickets for the ferry to the South Island. Since the tickets were much cheaper at night, we decided to take the ferry tonight.

After we had taken care of that, we continued on to the Botanic Garden, a large park in the middle of Wellington, where we even found a free parking space. From there, we strolled through the park for a few hours, past lakes, through herb gardens, greenhouses, and through a beautiful rose garden, which had over 100 different varieties of roses, each more beautiful than the other.

Afterwards, we decided to go grocery shopping for dinner. After we were done at Pack'n Save, we also decided to go to the Warehouse, as our gas for the cooker was running low and we wanted to look for some warmer clothes for the South Island.

In the end, we bought a large duvet with a cover so that we wouldn't freeze as much at night as we did the previous nights, and we both bought thick sweatshirt jackets.

Once all the shopping was done, we drove to the waterfront promenade and decided to prepare our dinner there. While I tidied up our car and made the bed with our newly acquired duvet, Tanina prepared the salad and Miriam fried the hash browns. Because tonight's dinner (now one of our favorite meals here) was burgers with a type of potato pancake instead of meat.

We then set up our buffet on a bench by the promenade and enjoyed our premium meal despite the critical looks from some passersby.

After dinner, we made our way to the ferry and once we arrived there, we slept for another hour before we finally had to board. On the ferry, we sat in a room where movies were playing and watched a whale movie and then a Smurf movie, both of which were not particularly great, and when we finally arrived on the South Island at 6 am the next morning, we decided to drive to the nearest campsite to sleep for a while and start the second part of our trip well-rested.